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Friday, July 3, 2015

Thanks for the good times WHFB

With each new beginning, there is an end.

Probably one of the saddest days for me in the hobby so far.

I'm not interested in the direction that Age of Sigmar is taking the hobby and I've decided to liquidate everything that I have. For those of you that might be interested, please check the Bartertown link here. Thanks for all the good years and support, know that these funds will be poured directly into 40K, which in its current form, still has what I look for in the hobby.

For those of you that might think this is me overreacting and jumping shark, it's really not. I'm simply not interested in what Age of Sigmar has to offer. I already have enough skirmish-level games that I can play such as X-Wing and Warmahordes, and both game systems still have what I enjoy the most about the gaming aspect of playing table-top. These three things are: army design, army customization, and doing so within a points limit. On top of that, FFG and PP also cares deeply about the community, customer retention, tournaments, and competitive game balance. I mean, have you seen some of these Warscrolls? What the fuck man.

I am a gamer first and foremost, more than anything else. When I'm not gaming, I'm building models so I can get them on the table to play. This is why ever since I sold off all my painted miniatures, I never bothered to paint them again. I'm that much of a gamer that I look back at all the time I've spent painting and I want them back so I can play more. Playing games gives me fun and fulfillment. It also inspires me to write on this blog so I can share my ideas, strategies and battle reports with you guys so you can continue to enjoy the game along side me. I don't see Age of Sigmar doing that for me, so I don't want to pollute this blog with any more god damn negativity. You gotta cut the negative stuff out of your life you know?

Regardless, this is going to be my last Warhammer Fantasy post. It has been 14 years since I started WHFB and today, that all comes to an end. I'm not interested in fan-supported 8th Edition, or ETC or anything else less than official because for me, I've been down that road with BFG and Epic and I'm not willing to do that again. If Age of Sigmar ever decides to bring back the things I enjoy the most about the hobby, I'll think about joining in again. For now though, it's goodbye.

10 comments:

Truthiness
said...

Right there with you brother. I'm not going the liquidation route, but I get that. I'm going to give Kings of War a shot first. Their second edition is coming next week. They're also openly calling GW bullshit by making army lists for GW armies. The system has been well developed in a very open manner. It's at least worth trying.

KoW has beta rules for Skaven already being worked on (currently downloadable) and the KoW2 rules are also finished, just being worked on for images and some tables yet, also currently downloadable.

My gaming group is basically planning to stick with WHFB 8E, and some of us will be trying KoW for a while as well. We did play AoS Friday night to give it a shot, and it's relatively entertaining. Worth playing if you already have the models, but I really can't see paying GW's model prices for what it offers. It's way too simplistic, and has others have gone over, it's incredibly unbalanced, needing house rules to make things more fair. So, well worth what we paid for, which of course, is nothing.

I haven't worked my way through their setup to get the regular army list yet. These links were provided to me by somebody else. Just remember, the Skaven stuff is still a work in progress. Mantic will be working on ten "WHFB style" armies in ernest after their new rules ship in August.

Absolutely this. I was completely down on it during the rumours and drip drab phase this week. But when those full rules hit it actually seemed like it might be OK. I was willing to give it a shot, it at least seemed like an attempt in the right direction in some ways. So we played a few games of it today.

It's actually just shit.

We tried to balance it ourselves at first, matching roughly the same number of wounds per side with roughly similar units.But doing that, there's no actual 'end' beyond 'stop when you want to'But if there's no sudden death, and I'm already losing on models lost (despite those being terrible skeleton warriors vs black ark corsairs and sorceresses) what's my incentive for ending the game until u mathematically can't win? None, so the game went on

And on

And on

And we got bored.

So we changed it up and 'tried' to break it by having a 'normal' army vs 5 big monsters. And the monsters got to choose a sudden death rule. So obv they chose 'have a model left by the end of turn 6'

So the monsters won. Yeah, fun.

Actually, it was at least slightly more entertaining than the never ending snore fest of the first game.

The system just doesn't work.

And the fact that you have to keep looking at all the individual wars rolls turn to turn to work out what each weapons hit and wound values are is annoying. And EVEN MORE annoying is that some big monsters values change as they take wounds, BUT NOT THE SAME VALUES FOR EACH MONSTER OR EVEN EACH VALUE ON THE SAME FRICKIN MONSTER.

It's not that we didn't have at least some fun, but it's not an actual 'game'

It's toys.

Its expensive toys.

With some dice.

Sorry for the length of that, but we gave it an honest chance and that's our honest assessment.

Yep, I feel your pain. I been a part of a very active group of friends that would travel to multiple GTs and had great times; making friends along the way. I've read the rules and many war scrolls and emotionally don't give a crap. It doesn't even seem good compared to several skirmish types games currently available. It is going to be weird but after 32 years I will be games-workshop free.

Mantic isn't the only option , Warlord Games are working on a fantasy version of their rules and their company is stuffed full of ex GW types like Rick Priestly who practically invented WHFB back in 1983 , Osprey have adapted Lion Rampant for fantasy and it's called Dragon Rampant and comes out in the autumn .

I find GW makes a lot of missteps in game design, but rarely makes poor business decisions. Sure, I don't like every move they make as a consumer, but I usually understand why they raise prices or lower models' points in order to make money.

I really, really don't understand this decision. I don't "get" the lack of communication. Are they releasing a points system later? Are legacy armies going to be supported? Is this it?

This seems, at this point at least, like a pretty big FUBAR. I hope Mantic, PP, and FFG reap the windfall of this (which is starting to look like a repeat of the community reaction to 3rd ed 40K).